come on pr people - start getting your hands dirty!

steve rubel argues that pr people should stop analysing blogs and start doing something about them. pr people should get their hands dirty and start interacting with consumers. he has three ideas: -

1) Hands-on Workshops: PRSA, Ragan, the IABC, PR Week and other organizations need to start running hands-on industry workshops - not just panels with bloggers. Memo to my friends at these organizations. This is money you're leaving on the table. Start renting rooms that have computers and wifi, not pens and pads.

2) Integration: Let's not do what we did back in the 1990s where we had lots of agencies with interactive divisions that had no connection to the mother ship. We need integration. We need to have every PR practitioner thinking about how they might use these tools in their current campaigns. Give blogs, RSS, podcasts just as much thought as press releases and pitch letters. I put this responsibility squarely on the PR professionals who are running PR campaigns. Innovate!

3) Encouragement: There's no easier way to get people learning about blogs, wikis, podcasts, RSS, tagging, etc. than to get them to try it. Hill and Knowlton's effort is exemplary. But it's a first step. We need to get more agency heads blogging. By having his own blog, Richard Edelman is on the right track here, but collectively we need to get more of our corporate siblings into the pool. At a we need to teach them how to make RSS reading part of their workaday. At CooperKatz we're there, but we have further to go too.